Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR vs. Symantec Critical System Protection

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Traps replaces traditional antivirus with multi-method prevention, a proprietary combination of malware and exploit prevention methods that protect users and endpoints from known and unknown threats.N/A
Symantec Critical System Protection
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
Symantec Critical System Protection is a lightweight behavioral hardening engine purpose-built to protect legacy, EOL systems and embedded devices, by adding layers of defense at the kernel level to prevent unhygenic operations on IoT devices and machines.N/A
Pricing
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDRSymantec Critical System Protection
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDRSymantec Critical System Protection
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDRSymantec Critical System Protection
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDRSymantec Critical System Protection
Small Businesses
SentinelOne Singularity
SentinelOne Singularity
Score 9.1 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
CrowdStrike Falcon
CrowdStrike Falcon
Score 9.1 out of 10
Qualys TruRisk Platform
Qualys TruRisk Platform
Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprises
CrowdStrike Falcon
CrowdStrike Falcon
Score 9.1 out of 10
Forescout Platform
Forescout Platform
Score 8.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDRSymantec Critical System Protection
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(12 ratings)
5.0
(2 ratings)
Usability
2.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(3 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDRSymantec Critical System Protection
Likelihood to Recommend
Palo Alto Networks
Malware that doesn’t leave files behind has become widely available. Anyone who can afford to reverse this trend should purchase technology. Application whitelisting isn’t for everyone, and Palo Alto Networks Traps can help. Enterprises looking for a low-affected, next-generation solution with high protection should consider it. PAN Traps is a great product at a reasonable price, and I highly recommend it.
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Broadcom
Symantec Critical System Protection (CSP) is very well suited for environments that do not change such as point of sale systems and critical servers. This product is spectacular at protecting end of life operating systems when supporting legacy software prevents upgrades. When security updates are no longer available, CSP will prevent exploits and other malware from taking advantage. This product is not well suited for systems that require a lot of changes. For one, it does not notify when a change has been blocked by CSP, causing some server administrators to waste many hours chasing a phantom technical problem when turning off CSP could have solved it right away. Also, profiling takes time so systems that constantly change would need hundreds of exceptions made.
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Pros
Palo Alto Networks
  • Direct Access to devices via Live Terminal which provides operations with scripting, triage, and preservation of artifacts.
  • Behavioral Indicators of Compromise which provides alerts on events regarding groups of hosts and their signatures.
  • Querying complex data sets involving a variety of devices for network connections, hashes, DNS, etc.
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Broadcom
  • Data Center Security 6.0 and higher allows you to easily build out policies to deploy to monitor/block what is required/needed.
  • The agent that is installed on the hosts has a small footprint in terms of CPU and memory usage.
  • The ability to customize it anyway you need to as well as utilize out of the box policies to monitor critical OS functionality.
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Cons
Palo Alto Networks
  • Traps doesn't seem to function as a traditional A/V very well, so it's better as another layer to your endpoint protection
  • Traps can cause issues with some legacy or custom programs, so exceptions may have to be made
  • Traps falsely identifies things as malicious at times, this is not often though
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Broadcom
  • Tuning takes a very long time
  • Turning the product on or off can take time
  • When an action is prevented by CSP, there is no pop up or notification, making this a burden for server administrators
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Usability
Palo Alto Networks
Day to day, Cortex is easy to use when you have no alerts and when an agent upgrade doesn't go south. Alerts are far too "clicky", there's too many steps to drilling down to what actually happened to trigger an alert. Investigating alerts in Cortex takes about 5x longer than it should.
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Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Palo Alto Networks
The support we receive from Palo Alto is one of the best aspects of Traps. It is very easy to recommend their support. It seems much easier to connect directly with someone with a deep understanding of the product rather than other companies where you basically have to make an airtight case that it is some kind of non-standard issue that can't be solved with existing documentation. Palo Alto digs deep and helps with advanced troubleshooting to get things working.
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Broadcom
They respond quickly and efficiently without the need to reiterate the actual issue. Their backline support is amazing and always there for us when it is needed. They explain the troubleshooting steps taken and what they did to help us resolve the issue just incase it creeps up again we have the information to correct it ourselves.
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Alternatives Considered
Palo Alto Networks
Traps is the slickest interface, easy to use and intuitive rule making, and the rest just didn't quite stack up to the performance level of Traps. McAfee and Kaspersky just hog processor and RAM power. I didn't like the interface and functionality of SentinelOne as much as Traps. Palo Alto really put a lot of time into the development of this software, and had some of the founding fathers of IT Security heading the development process. Can't beat that.
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Broadcom
We evaluated Bit 9 and you have more flexibility with the rule set and do not rely on the cloud to tell you what is approved and not approved. You build out the policies the way you need them to be and who better knows the environment that the people that work it daily.
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Return on Investment
Palo Alto Networks
  • After putting Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR on a user's system, users came back with a positive response that there are no performance issues now.
  • We are able to track and control granular suspicious and malicious activities.
  • Web controls are missing, which if they would have been there would have been very helpful.
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Broadcom
  • Great protection for unchanging systems
  • We have comfort that the protected systems are safe from intrusion
  • Excellent price
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